For the Record

Bank Notes

Great story on the bank that was “small enough to jail” (“Scapegoats,” Winter 2018). I knew about Abacus bank but didn’t know the daughters were BC Law grads. And what a champion their dad is—as is the whole clan.

Paul KenneyMilton, Massachusetts

I just read the winter issue and was wowed. The cover story of the alum Sung sisters and the mistreatment of their family Abacus bank by Manhattan DA [Cyrus] Vance is something I’ve followed in the news. Their bravery, and that of their dad, in standing up to prosecutorial misconduct is to be greatly admired. What I didn’t know until the article was that the Sung sisters were BC Law grads, so now I’m doubly proud of them.

Lewis Rosenberg ’63New York, NY

Photograph of Sung family members in Abacus Bank (above)

More Spy Cases for Zeidenberg

The recent federal indictment of two former CIA officers on separate espionage-related charges brought to mind Peter Zeidenberg ’85 as an ideal candidate to represent one or both defendants. It was Zeidenberg who successfully advocated for two Chinese American scientists charged with economic espionage/theft of trade secrets in a pair of high-profile DOJ cases (“The China Syndrome,” Winter 2017 issue).

Turns out newly minted defendants Kevin Patrick Mallory and Jerry Chun Shing Lee have other representation, but checking in with Zeidenberg, a partner at Arent Fox in the nation’s capital, revealed that he’s got comparable cases on his own docket list. “There’s been no letup,” says Zeidenberg of federal prosecutors who he believes “are casting way too wide a net.”

The DOJ withdrew charges against one of Zeidenberg’s aforementioned clients in 2015, but there’s emergent news on the other defendant, government hydrologist Sherry Chen, who had charges against her dropped in 2015, but was fired for “untrustworthiness” in 2016. This spring, a judge ordered she be reinstated, with back pay, and affirmed Chen’s assertion that she was “the victim of a gross injustice.” Zeidenberg says: “There are dozens more similarly situated Chinese American scientists being profiled and targeted who have done nothing wrong. We all suffer when that happens.”